Plumbline Author: Charles Adams
Date: December 18, 2001
Topic: Stark Contrasts (re-run)

A few weeks ago I found myself in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There I joined a couple of hundred Christian academicians at a conference entitled “Christian Scholarship.For What?” In part, the conference was the capstone celebration of the 125 ^th anniversary of Calvin College. But it was also a celebration of the coming-of-age of Christian Scholarship. The conference title was thus, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. We all think we know what Christian scholarship is for. More to the point, the outside world is coming to know as well. Christian scholarship has gained of late, a level of respectability in the world academy. People like Nicholas Wolterstorff, George Marsden, and Alvin Plantinga are now recognized at places like Yale, Princeton, and Notre Dame, not just as Christian scholars, but as American scholars, leaders in such fields as philosophy and history. At the conference, therefore, the air we breathed tingled with the sweet aroma of triumphalism. There were a few disconcerting moments: like when a renowned author, identifying herself as a Christian, took her invitation to speak as an occasion to bash Christian scholarship. But that had no more effect than a momentary wind shift in Sioux County, and soon we were breathing again the invigorating, celebratory air.

Then on Saturday morning, the conference weekend took an unexpected turn for my wife and I. We were eating breakfast in the motel restaurant when George Marsden and his wife Luci stopped by our table to say hello. Luci is a friend from long ago. Roughly the same age as my wife and I, her father had been the pastor of the little Orthodox Presbyterian Church in which I grew up. He had preached solidly Reformed sermons Sunday after Sunday, which somehow, by God's grace, influenced my teenage mind. He taught most of the catechism classes and led the young people 's group which my wife and I attended before we were married. And it was he, Pastor Ray Commeret, who officiated at our wedding a long, long time ago. Although we had seen Luci on a couple of occasions during the past ten years, we had not seen her father for almost thirty years. So Luci urged us to visit him while we were in Grand Rapids. A couple of years ago he had experienced a stroke and a serious fall. As a result, he was now living in a Christian care facility on the outskirts of Grand Rapids. Well, needless to say, we acted on Luci's suggestion and made plans to skip one of the conference sessions in order to visit my old pastor.

When we arrived at the care facility we were somewhat surprised to find that while pleasant enough from the outside, it seemed small and a bit crowded inside. In the lobby, one of the residents pointed out to us a directory where we located Ray's name and his room number. His room was much like a small hospital room. The first thing I noticed was that he was not alone. He shared his small world with another person, a younger man whose mental impairment required for him the services of that care facility. The younger man gestured toward Ray as we entered the room, as if he knew we couldn't be there to visit him, but must be looking for his older roommate. Ray was seated in a wheelchair next to his bed with his back to the door. He wheeled around as we entered and the first thing I noticed was his eyes. They were the same eyes that had looked straight at me from the driver's seat of his 1964 Peugeot on the day he took me out for pie and a Coke, just before I left home for my freshman year at college. There was always a smile behind those eyes_not a joking or a duplicitous smile, intended either to amuse or beguile, but rather a smile that merged genuine affability with humble confidence, a “Romans 8:28” kind of smile, if I may put it that way. But the smile behind his eyes belied his existential state. He wasn't just sitting in a wheelchair; he was strapped in. He was able to move freely only his right arm and so we shook hands enthusiastically. But his speech came slowly and with effort and it was clear that he was working hard to keep his mind focused. None-the-less, he seemed to have little trouble recognizing both my wife and I, despite the 30-year transformation from young couple to grandparents that had elapsed since we last met. He amazed me by remembering “Rensselaer,” the name of the eastern college for which I had left home back in 1964. Mostly, for a little more than a half hour, we talked about family, and how the Lord had blessed both he and us with our respective children and grandchildren. Once or twice he mentioned, with a tinge of sadness, his present surroundings. He didn't like having to live in a care facility, sharing a room with a man who, as he said, “laughed inordinately” at his occasional jokes. But he was not bitter or despairing. In many respects he was the same “witness to the truth” that he was when I knew him best, 35 years ago. Soon the noon hour closed in on us and it became clear that Ray's efforts to maintain focus were tiring him. It was also time for him to use his one good arm to wheel himself out of his room and go to lunch. So we wished each other the Lord's continued blessings and we took our leave.

Driving back to the campus of Calvin College for the remainder of the conference, I couldn't help but reflect upon the transitory nature of our human condition and how the events of any particular moment need to be viewed from a perspective that doesn't lose track of the whole. Seeing my friend and former pastor Ray_really the first Christian scholar I had ever known_humbled by the boundary conditions of his very creatureliness, put the Christian scholarship conference in a new and more clarifying light. While those at the conference reveled in the recent past and looked forward to anticipated academic achievements in the future, Ray's future would be of another sort entirely. He would, of course, to the best of his now limited abilities, enjoy the occasional visits of friends and relatives. But most of his remaining time will be spent awaiting the Lord' s final call.

Saturday evening we attended the banquet that closed the Christian scholar's conference. Before we ate our meal, a young woman arose in an attempt to make some appropriate, closing comments. She overflowed with near ecstasy as she described the pursuit of truth to which those at the conference were committed. But it rang hollow to me. The room seemed to echo with inauthenticity and self-deception. The truth she spoke of_almost placing it on a pedestal to be worshipped_seemed narrow and contrived. Perhaps it was because I had encountered truth _the John 14:6 variety_earlier in the day. I had stared at it in the eyes of my friend Ray. And the contrast.the contrast between what I saw there and what I was experiencing at the banquet.was so terribly stark.

For Plumbline, I'm Charles Adams, Dean of the Natural Sciences, Dordt College